Former Cards exec Correa sentenced to prison

Former Cardinals scouting director Chris Correa was sentenced to 46 months in prison by a federal judge on Monday for illegally accessing the Astros’ player personnel database and email system.

In January, Correa pleaded guilty to five counts of unauthorized access of a protected computer from 2013 to at least December ’14. Correa was promoted to St. Louis’ director of baseball development in ’14, but he was dismissed last July after allegations of the illegal conduct first surfaced.

Correa also must pay a fine of $279,038 in restitution. He faced up to five years in prison on each count.

Astros general counsel Giles Kibbe, who was at the sentencing, said Correa breached “Ground Control” — the team’s internal database which stores contract information, scouting reports and other stats and proprietary information — 60 times between March 2013 and June 2014. Some of the information, including confidential trade talks, wound up being made public on Deadspin.com.

“It’s a long sentence, but the judge said it was a very serious crime, and he did it repeatedly over a long period of time,” Kibbe said. “He had an opportunity to look at everything we had for a long period of time and use that information to assist him in his job with the Cardinals. So it’s obviously a very serious offense and a pretty rough day for baseball.”

In a …

continue reading in source mlb.mlb.com